Copyright

September 02, 2014

Here I've spent the first half of 2014 thinking I could no longer run giveaways for THE OBVIOUS GAME on Goodreads because it was published in 2013. (The dropdown in the author tools area only give you options for the year prior to your pub date and the year of your pub date.) I was sad, because Goodreads giveaways are such a win/win. They are inexpensive for an author to run (you only pay for the books and shipping) and they provide exposure as each sign-up adds the book to the signee's to-read shelf, thus giving the author and the book exposure she wouldn't otherwise have had. Lately most of my dealings with THE OBVIOUS GAME have been either asking people to review it or answering emails from people who love people with eating disorders (in which really what can I say but, "Well, I wrote an entire book about what I want to say to you now, so maybe you could read that and then let me know if you want to talk more"). The answering the emails part is really hard. Really hard. But I am really glad I at least have the book to point them to.

And this is the part where I say, "Hey, if you've read THE OBVIOUS GAME, could you drop me a review on Goodreads and Amazon? It doesn't even have to be nice! Nobody likes everything." And then I follow that up by saying, "If you haven't read THE OBVIOUS GAME, mightn't you request it at your library, and if your librarian has trouble, she can contact me and I will get her the book with my author discount?" And then you might say, "But I really want to help you MORE." So of course I would smile sincerely and say, "Well, you could buy my book! Or even just share the giveaway so more people will know it exists." And then I burst into tears and throw my arms around you.

July 16, 2014

I'm watching a documentary about eating disorder treatment called THIN. I think I understand better why so much in-patient treatment doesn't work.

I don't see staff showing compassion. They refer to the patients as antidepressant junkies, even the suicidal ones. The parents seem clueless. I'm angry, watching this.

I get 3-4 emails a week from people who have read my ED posts. I can't believe there is so little out there that is real. I want to wrap my arms around these women and girls (and sometimes boys). They are so scared of their own bodies. They should be more scared of their minds, and their minds are being sadly neglected.

ED is about the mind. It's about looking into your future and asking yourself if you can stand the thought of suffering at this level in five, ten, fifteen years. If you have ED, you have three choices: you can suffer indefinitely, you can recover, or you can die.

Those are your choices.

Some of us contract terminal diseases. The difference between those people and the general population is that those people know how they will die.

We will all die someday. The human mortality rate is currently 100%.

The question is: Do you want to speed it up?

I didn't care when I was sick. When I looked at recovery, I started to care. I reached for happiness, for peace. I didn't want to go on like that. That daily struggle between life and death is awful. How can anyone keep it up indefinitely? At what cost?

It is my hope that anyone reading this while hating his or herself can see the three choices clearly and want, seriously want, to eliminate the more dismal two.

There are evolutionary reasons our brains can drive us for perfectionism that don't seem necessary in 2014. It's okay to tell that part of your brain to stand down. In a First World country, you can get water from the tap. Stop listening to the part of your brain that says you need to run five miles to deserve it. That's not true. Your brain is stuck on evolutionary default, but you have a frontal lobe. Let your frontal lobe win.

Life is short. Life is beautiful. Seize the desire to be fierce, to live free, to tell your asshole inner voice to go back to the cave and wait for a saber-toothed tiger. In 2014, what matters is staying sane despite the photoshopping and the Pinterest and the perfect family Facebooks. Stay with us. Value yourself in your soul enough to keep that shell that carries your soul around alive.

July 10, 2014

In preparing to write this post honoring my friend and activist/entrepreneur, Katherine Stone of Postpartum Progress, I searched my gmail, which has also archived my old hotmail account, to see when we first found each other. I dug up an email from Katherine dated April 15, 2009, which would've been a few weeks after my daughter's fifth birthday and about a year after I started getting help and taking medication for my anxiety disorder. Katherine wrote:

This Mother's Day - Sunday, May 10 -- Postpartum Progress will host its first annual Mother's Day Rally for Moms' Mental Health. Each hour, on the hour, for 24 hours straight I will post a different "Letter to New Moms" written by survivors of and experts on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.

That email signified just one of Katherine's countless efforts to make moms suffering from mental illness feel more normal. I did write that post, and Katherine and I have written for one another on the subject of maternal mental health again and again, knowing we can prop each other and even strangers up over the miles with our voices.

The first time I remember clearly having a long conversation with Katherine in person was at Type A Mom in 2010. She was a little intimidating with her long, red hair and tall, lanky self and these totally adorable sparkly heels, which she later said her kids bought her. The kids and the shoes stuck, because it's important to remember even people who present as physically beautiful and loomingly tall and effortlessly stylish are people with insecurities and doubts. It's easy to meet people at blogging conferences and think they are perfect, but nobody is perfect, and everyone has her struggles. Katherine embodies that dichotomy for me.

Here is this person who looks completely pulled together but who is so willing to share her pain in order to make the rest of us sitting around in our yoga pants and flipflops feel human again. For that, Katherine, I salute you.

I always felt I needed to do something meaningful with my life but continually struggled to figure out what it was. Then I was struck with postpartum depression and I had this gut reaction – the kind that nags at you that you can only ignore for so long until you must act – that I needed to help other women. It's hard to imagine something so awful could lead you to your avocation, but it pushed me toward focusing my life on being a voice for suffering pregnant and new mothers.

It's been my great pleasure and honor to watch Katherine over the years blossom and grow and fight to become the owner of the most widely-read blog on PPD in the world. Thank you, Katherine, for all that you do. You are amazing. Congratulations on ten years at Postpartum Progress.